


Any Road Will Take You There

by Nerissa



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), White Collar
Genre: Brief but Intense Road Trip, Canon Era, F/F, Getting Together, Hostage Situations - School Setting, Magical Artifacts, Spells & Enchantments, not entirely canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-17 13:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14833094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/pseuds/Nerissa
Summary: Sara is in pursuit of a mid-level fence who has stolen an improbably ancient artefact, but her trip takes an unexpected turn when he leads her to a town that's not on any map.The locals don't seem to want her to stay, but Sara has a job to do, and besides: there's something strangely compelling about Sheriff Emma Swan.





	Any Road Will Take You There

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OzQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OzQueen/gifts).



Sara Ellis tapped her finger doubtfully against the steering wheel, and considered the road ahead.

 _Welcome to Storybrooke_ , the sign proclaimed, but somehow she got the feeling the sign didn’t mean it. Like when Aunt Barb had said “so nice to see you” every Thanksgiving until she and Uncle Cy got the divorce and Barb took off to Florida and never sent so much as a card, which, Dad said, was his sister all over. Her welcome had rung false, but her escape had been swift and sure when the time came.

Sara, studying the gateway to Storybrooke, got the distinct impression she should make her own escape plan if she wanted to proceed.

She gave herself a shake. _If_ she wanted to proceed? Of course she did. Lou Kempner had driven down this very road not three hours ago with an Atlantean scroll in his pocket, and Sara had driven after him. She hadn’t seen any turns between here and the exit, which meant he _must_ have come this way, along with the scroll. That meant this was the way she would go too.

Even if the welcome sign did make her think of Aunt Barb.

Shifting the car out of park she advanced down the road, shaming herself for her caution while still wondering if she might be headed in the wrong direction. As the town rose around her, all quaint little homes, picket fences and a Main Street like something out of a barely-modern Mayberry revival hour, her unease intensified. The place didn’t seem quite . . . _quite_. But she was here, and Lou had to be here too, or at least he had to have been.

If Lou had even half the brains his theft of the scroll suggested he must, he wouldn’t have stopped for anything more than gas and maybe a bite to eat. And as much as Sara wanted to keep going, to put this very pretty New England town as far behind her as fast as she could, she knew what it might cost her in commission if she skipped the very obvious common-sense step of stopping in at the very establishments which furnished those necessaries to see if Lou had, in fact, been by.

The man at the garage she pulled up to seemed genuinely surprised to see her, as though the novelty of a passerby needing to fill their tank was unlike any he had encountered in his profession before that day. He then gave Sara a jolt by offering to fill the car for her.

“People still do that?” she marvelled, leaning out her window to watch him at work. He shrugged.

“I guess. Not much else for it, is there?” He watched the numbers tick up on the tank a moment, then added, with a kind of forced nonchalance, “Are you passing through?”

The prickle of unease returned.

“Yes,” she said, because it felt like the right answer. His shoulders unknit.

“Well, I won’t keep you.”

Sara forced her  smile to sit light and easy on her face. “Do you see a lot of people passing through?”

“Not many. We’re a bit off the beaten path here.”

“That’s true,” Sara allowed. “You know, you’re not even in my GPS.”

The tension returned to his shoulders.

“That so?” he said, but his tone did not invite elaboration.

The pump dinged and he replaced the nozzle. She followed him inside to settle the bill, and was in the act of retrieving her wallet when the door behind her jingled, and she turned to face the polite confusion of another local.

This one was much easier on the eyes than the gas station clerk. She had a profusion of blonde curls and a long, easy stride, which had arrested more clumsily than was likely her wont when Sara turned around.

“Oh,” said the newcomer, blinking rapidly at Sara, “hello.”

Sara was starting to feel almost defensive about the reaction she was evoking from the local element.

“Hello,” she said, a trifle defiantly.

The other woman nodded, still uncertain. She advanced slowly, carefully, as if Sara might suddenly jump at her.

“Are you passing through?” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and Sara saw the sheriff’s badge pinned to her belt. Well, here at least was a person who might have some cause to ask that question with suspicion. She could even be helpful, if Sara could only swallow her irritation at the strong suggestion she could not possibly be doing more than passing through.

“I’m looking for somebody,” she said. “I think he might have come this way. He’d be driving an old blue Crown Vic.”

The sheriff’s face went carefully blank. She looked sideways at the  clerk, and Sara looked over to see the clerk’s face, too, bore a studied lack of expression. This was now well beyond bizarre. Sara felt a wild impulse to start humming the Twilight Zone theme, if only to make it clear to both of them that she didn’t think much of their cloak and dagger hostility.

Then, to her surprise, the sheriff broke into something almost like a genuine smile. The very sight of it eased the thick tension that had settled in the room.

“I don’t think we’re going to find him here,” she said. “But if you’d like something to eat, we may be able to figure out which way he went. Let me buy you lunch?”

The abrupt change of tone and tactic was even more discombobulating than the thinly-veiled hostility. Even so, Sara heard herself accept the invitation. She stepped outside again, this time with the Sheriff’s escort, and followed the direction of her pointing hand to see a diner tucked halfway down the street on the other side.

“Want to walk?” the sheriff suggested. “Your car will be safe here.”

“Not a high crime rate area, then?” Sara inferred, falling into step beside the sheriff. Walking at her side seemed to make the town itself feel a little less foreboding, somehow. Like maybe it wasn’t trying to rush her off at its earliest convenience.

The sheriff tucked her hands in her pockets as she strolled.

“Nobody around here really goes in much for car theft,” she said, which Sara noted was not exactly an answer, but seemed truthful all the same.

“Introductions, either,” she said tartly. The other woman’s smile tugged wider.

“Emma Swan,” she said, as though it were a confession. “I’m the sheriff here, though I guess you know that cause . . . well. I saw you looking.” She tapped the badge with a muddled expression of embarrassed satisfaction. “And you?”

“Sara Ellis.” She had the card ready between her fingers and flipped it out, sideways, for Emma to accept. They continued walking as Emma studied the script.

“Insurance, huh? I guess that explains why you’re looking for Lou.”

Sara’s stride faltered.

“I don’t think I told you his name.”

Emma tapped the corner of the card against her palm.

“Yeah. I know. Look, let’s just go to Granny’s, all right? We’ll have a nice bite to eat, and you can tell me what Lou’s done now. Then we’ll see if we can’t make it right.”

Sara hesitated. She looked around.

The town still had that storefront poised quaintness to it, postcard perfect and all the more uneasy-making because of it. The few people who were out and about were making a clears effort not to look in her direction, though the few who passed closest did manage to offer greetings to Sheriff Swan that sounded normal enough.

It was Emma herself, though, who decided for Sara. She looked so earnest standing there that Sara found she couldn’t bring herself to let her down.

“Yeah,” she heard herself say, “all right. Let’s eat.”

 

* * *

 

She made the right call, Sara thought, sitting back in the booth with a carefully-disguised _ummph_ of satiation. Granny’s food was delicious. Emma smiled at Sara’s expression of glassy-eyed satisfaction and swiped a soft crust of homemade bread through the last drops of gravy on her own plate.

“ _Right_?” she said, as thought Sara had spoken.

“How is this place not packed?” Sara wondered, dazed. “The food is . . . oh my God.” She looked at her empty plate. “Oh my _God_.”

Emma, chewing, shrugged.

“It’s already past midday,” she said, after swallowing the morsel of gravy-soaked bread. “Come supper it’ll pick up a lot. But right now most people have already gone back to work.”

“Yes but surely you get tourists,” Sara probed, still marvelling that there could be any seats empty in a place that served food that good. “They’d keep it . . .”

She trailed off, seeing Emma’s expression become guarded once more.

“No tourists,” she said shortly. “We’re not that kind of town.”

Sara frowned. She made a deliberate effort to infuse her tone with airy sarcasm when next she spoke.

“Ah, just so. But apparently you _are_ the kind of town that a known fence feels comfortable frequenting to the point that the sheriff knows his name.”

Emma’s eyes narrowed.

“I don’t like what you seem to be implying, Miss Ellis,” she said, and though the words themselves were comparatively mild, there was something in her tone that brought all Sara’s misgivings roaring back a hundredfold. “I am not in the habit of condoning . . . actual crime.”

It was an odd way to put it, but Sara had more to worry about than that.

“Look,” she said, trying for a more conciliatory tone, “you need to give me this much, all right? This place is like something you’d see on—on TV. It’s adorable. To the point that it almost feels a little unreal.”

The explanation, rather than mollifying Emma, seemed to be increasing her discomfort. Sara, watching her shoulders tense much like those of the gas station attendant, felt an overpowering urge to calm her that she had not felt with him.

“I don’t meant to cause offence,” she said gently. “But please, try to understand my confusion. This place seems like a perfect tourist town. It has all the bells and whistles. It’s quaint and clean and it’s right on the water. So when you tell me that you don’t get tourists here, it doesn’t make sense.”

Emma nodded. She stirred her spoon absently in an almost-empty cup of coffee, and seemed particularly focused on its dregs for an uncomfortable stretch of time. Then, abruptly, she looked up.

“Did you really come here looking for Lou?”

Sara met her gaze squarely.

“I followed him here.”

Emma flinched. She shut her eyes tight, as if against a rogue shaft of sunlight, then sighed.

“He has something, and you’re trying to get it back.” It was the sort of guess that sounded more like an obvious conclusion. Sara nodded.

“A scroll. Rare piece, from a private collection. Insured at . . . a not-inconsiderable sum. If I can take it back with me, we’ll be saved a very uncomfortable payout.”

“Of course.” Emma poked at her coffee spoon, considering. “He does live here, you know. I can tell you that much. I don’t even mind taking you to where we’d maybe be able to find him, though I’m not willing to enter without a warrant.”

The way she did not quite meet Sara’s gaze as she said this suggested to Sara that a _local_ insurance agent—if the scenic, non-tourist town of Storybrooke even had such a thing—might not have had similar difficulty gaining access. Calling Emma on this didn’t seem particularly fruitful, though, so she refrained from comment and tried to look both appreciative and encouraging.

“He isn’t likely to be there, though,” Emma went on. “I mean, he doesn’t stay anywhere long, not since Gold . . . not for a while. And almost never keeps them at his place.”

“Them?” Sara prompted. Emma looked even more uncomfortable.

“The—the objects.”

One of Sara’s perfectly-shaped brows made a polite ascension of inquiry. Emma sighed.

“Look, you have to understand the politics in this town are _literally_ unbelievable, okay? If I even told you what our Mayor was just . . . no. That’s not what this is about. But I need you to believe I can’t just arrest a guy like Lou. I don’t want you to think I don’t care, but honestly, Sara—I can call you Sara?—when it comes to Lou taking stuff like that, it’s not the biggest deal.

“Now, again, given the particular politics of this town if you told me that this scroll was some kind of obscure artefact with important connections to some society of myth, legend or otherwise magical properties then yes we _might_ have a reason to . . . what? Why are you . . . oh.”

Because Sara was staring at her, startled, before flipping open her purse and extracting a slim file folder, which she pushed across the table for Emma to peruse.

“The Atlantean Scroll,” Sara said, her voice still slightly strangled with the force of her own surprise, “surfaced in Boston twenty-eight years ago. It is of indeterminate and obscure origin, but its antiquity has been authenticated by no fewer than half a dozen experts in Greek and Mediterranean artefacts, all of whom placed strong emphasis on its uniquely excellent state of preservation for its age.

“It is posited,” she went on with particular care, as though this part was embarrassing enough to say that it caused her minor physical pain to do so, “that the artefact may in fact date to the . . . era and location of the . . . erm . . .”

“Lost Island of Atlantis,” Emma concluded, reading that particular piece of information in the fact sheet. Her lip twisted downward. “Okay. That puts a different spin on it.”

“On what?” said Sara, struggling to follow.

“I don’t know where he’ll be keeping it,” Emma said evasively, “but I will definitely do everything I can to help you get it back.” She tapped the file shut and slid it back across the table. “We’ll go see the mayor about a warrant.”

She did not wait for Sara to process this, but dropped a few bills on the table, waved her thanks to their waitress and slid out of the booth.

“The—wait, the mayor?” Sara got to her feet in a progressive cloud of confusion. She looked after Emma. “For a _warrant_?”

Emma turned easily on her heel to face Sara, but kept walking backward as she spoke, bumping the door gently open with the curve of her hip.

“We do things a little differently around here,” she said casually. “Including elections. And all the rest.”

Then she disappeared out the door, leaving Sara alone in a diner not even half-full of patrons, all of whom, she saw quite clearly, were definitely making a point of not looking in her direction.

“No kidding,” she muttered. Then, because she saw no other recourse, she scooped the folder back into her purse, waved her awkward thanks at the waitress and the elderly woman behind the counter, and hurried out the door to follow Emma Swan.

 

* * *

 

The mayor, Sara soon learned, was Mayor Mills, a dark-haired woman with an expression of such acidic suspicion that she made all the other townsfolk look welcoming by contrast.

“Miss Swan,” she said, though she was staring at Sara as she spoke, “you are _full_ of surprises today.”

“I don’t like to think of you being bored, Regina,” Emma drawled, and the open insolence of her tone was enough to recapture the mayor’s focus. Satisfied, Emma launched into her request.

“I need a warrant. We have to search a building downtown. Maybe a couple, actually.”

“Miss Swan,” the mayor was still looking at Emma, but now Sara got the impression she was speaking particularly for Sara’s benefit, “you must know I could not possibly draw up a warrant simply on your say-so. I am sure such a course of action would be outrageously unethical, and probably a violation of some poor citizen’s right to due process.”

“Regina—”

“Now, if you would like to present the appropriate proofs, I will be happy to review them, and if I decide your case has merit—”

“For God’s sake, Regina,” Emma’s temper cracked through with such ease as to suggest it had a lot of practice being lost around the mayor, “a world jum—I mean, Lou Kempner’s got the Atlantean Scroll. I wouldn’t even have wasted my time coming here except for—well—”

And though Emma did not actually point at Sara, the rigidity of her body seemed somehow to indicate her companion all the same. Sara, feeling more at sea than ever, though strangely also more a part of things than she had felt since she first drove into town, stood mute and watched Regina process this information with, if possible, even greater and more obvious dismay than Emma had done when Sara shared it.

“Oh. Well, of course in that case, I must see what I can do.” She looked down blankly at her purse, as if expecting the warrant to materialize from within it. When it did not, she looked back to Emma.

“I’ll have it drawn up at my office, and send somebody around with it. Will that suffice?”

Emma nodded curtly, and started away. Sara looked from her retreating back to Regina, gave an awkward, brief little wave, and headed off in Emma’s wake.

Behind her, stilted but with an underlying ring of sincerity, Regina called out:

“Welcome to Storybrooke, Miss—Er—hmm.”

Sara, who’d been called worse, waved her hand in acknowledgement and kept walking.

 

* * *

 

Lou, Emma explained as they drove her not-at-all standard issue police car, a rattletrap yellow VW bug, back toward the heart of town, kept a number of hidey holes around the area.

“We almost never bother with him,” she said frankly, “because it’s usually just regular things. Silver and cash and candlesticks. You know? Ordinary things people steal. He can’t do a lot with those, so we let it be. But every now and then he gets hold of something really bad, and then it gets ugly. Last time he pulled something like this it was Chaldean armor, if you can believe it. Found a buyer in, uh, a place. Nasty guy. A warlord.”

“Warlord?” Sara said faintly. Emma flinched.

“Did I say . . ? Crime lord. Mob boss. Violent, and just awful. Took a lot of us to handle him. Henry nearly—well, he’s okay, but no thanks to Lou. He’s always been on everybody’s shitlist but nobody’s giving him an inch since then. He hasn’t had the nerve to go after anything like that in almost a month, but it sounds like maybe he’s getting brave again. And if it’s really the Atlantean Scroll . . .”

“Well, it’s generally held to be,” Sara said cautiously. “But I don’t want you to think it’s going to be something he can offload in a hurry. These things take time even for the best fences, and I assure you, Lou has never been considered one of the better—“

“In the city, no,” Emma agreed. For the first time Sara noticed the blanching around her knuckles where she gripped the wheel. “In the city Lou is still what he used to be here. A whiny, no-account little sneak thief. Nothing to be scared of. You’re right about that. But now, here . . .” she trailed off, and shook her head. An angry gust of air blasted out between her teeth.

“He has contacts, okay? People he knew in another place, when he was something worse than what he is now. And those people are big, and they matter, and they did not get to matter without making a lot of other people suffer in the meantime. So when Lou gets his hands on something like the Scroll of Atlantis, everybody in Storybrooke knows enough to duck and cover.”

“Well if he’s so dangerous,” Sara frowned, “why don’t you just lock him up?”

Emma smiled mirthlessly at her passenger as they pulled up in front of a building that bore a certain air of forlorn neglect.

“Some things,” she said, “don’t work on people in Storybrooke the way they do out there.”

Then, before Sara could formulate a reply to that perplexing statement, Emma popped her seatbelt, slid out from behind the wheel and started toward the building. Sara, who was for far from the first time that day mightily glad she’d forsaken her heels for a much more sensible pair of flats, had little choice but to scramble out and follow.

 

* * *

 

“This is where he lives?” Sara marvelled. Emma had broken them neatly into the building with nothing more than an evaluative shoulder and two sharp kicks to a weak spot on the boarded-up door. Once inside, the early afternoon light filtering through haphazardly boarded-up windows gave enough illumination for them to make out boxes and bins of assorted goods, some more obviously valuable than others. Sara trailed a fingertip over the shoulder of a garment bag stamped with the label of a painfully exclusive New York boutique and, with great effort, forbore to peek inside. “Or is this just his hidey hole?”

Emma rifled through bins and drawers with more reckless urgency than anything like order and method.

“He’s got three or four places like this,” she explained, flipping up the top of a box, rattling its contents, then tossing it back into the drawer it had come from. “This is the biggest. He sleeps in all of them, sometimes, but I think he has another place . . . ugh. Not here.”

She stepped back from the chest she had ransacked, clearly annoyed.

“Should we look . . ?” Sara gestured vaguely around her, indicating the thousands of other possible hiding places. Emma shook her head.

“This is the only one where the dust hadn’t settled. See? Here, and there.” She pointed at the handles on the chest that were brighter than the others. “He’s been opening those within the last couple weeks, but he hasn’t touched anything else in here. Looks like maybe he cleared a few things out, too. Most of the drawers I opened were empty. Just a little wax and some feathers.”

Sara shivered, despite the musty heat of the boarded-up building.

“Wax and feathers sounds kind of suggestive,” she murmured. Emma shot her a surprised glance.

“Of what?”

“Well . . .” Sara hesitated. “Ritual?”

Emma’s surprise intensified, then her face smoothed over quickly.

“He could just be into some kinky sex thing, too,” she pointed out dismissively. “Let’s not jump right to portals and portents yet, all right? Come on. We have a few more places to check before we’re done.”

Sara kept pace with her back to the car, and wished, as she walked, that Emma’s abrupt dismissal of her theory had been more convincing. Because even when they stepped out into the sun, Sara still felt cold.

 

* * *

 

“Do you have family here?” she wondered, as Emma cut the wheel to the right and the car bore them East, into a more residential section of town. “Parents, husband . . . wife? Kids?”

She glanced at Emma’s naked fingers.

“Goldfish?”

Emma’s mouth pulled tight at the corner, as if she wanted to acknowledge the sincerity of Sara’s effort.

“My parents live here, yeah. And my son.” She shifted in her seat. “It’s kind of a joint custody arrangement.”

“Oh. Is his father here too?”

“No. And it’s not him I share custody with, it’s . . .” Emma broke off and shook her head. “It’s complicated.” She shifted into a higher gear and the car rattled down a wider street. “Everything here is complicated.”

Sara had not felt any of the tension abate since arriving in the town, but somehow knowing that Emma could feel it too made it seem less alien; more like an expected part of the environment. Like the putrid smell of a pulp mill, or something. She relaxed into the oddity just a little. You could maybe even get used to it, given enough time.

Then she saw the way Emma’s fingers twitched and jerked on the steering wheel, and the next thought occurred to her.

“How long have _you_ lived here?”

Emma’s hands went very still. Then she applied her foot to the brake, and the car slowed down outside a small fourplex near the corner.

“Some days it feels like longer than others,” she said evasively, and nodded toward the building. “Oh and just so you know, this one’s going to get a little loud.”

“Loud?” Sara echoed, but again, Emma was already out of the car.

 

* * *

 

“SNOOPING PRYING BUSYBODY THUGS!”

A teapot shattered against the wall, and Sara took hasty refuge behind the meagre shelter of a floor lamp. Emma, hands extended in a pacifying gesture, was trying to soothe the pinched little woman in a floral-patterned muumuu who insisted on screaming and hurling crockery.

“Mrs. Kempner, please. I understand you don’t appreciate—”

“UNDUE PREJUDICE AND HARRASSMENT!”

A gravy boat that Sara was almost positive bore the Limoges stamp on its base hurtled through the air and broke into several pieces against a bookshelf overflowing with all manner of knickknacks and gewgaws, though no actual reading material was in sight.

“Mrs. Kempner, please believe me that—”

“You’ve got it in for my Louis! You’re after him all because he’s made a few injudicious choices of companion in his life, and you don’t have the _balls_ to go after the real criminals!”

A soup tureen met a grisly end against the space heater. Sara, watching from the shelter of her lamp, was comforted to observe that Mrs. Kempner’s aim appeared to be extremely poor. Which was just as well, because the same could fairly have been said of Emma’s negotiating skills.

“Mrs. Kempner,” she rapped out, her patience clearly having it a worn point, “Lou has tried to cut my throat on two separate occasions. Hell, the last time we had to arrest your son he tried to _kidnap_ mine. _And_ the time before that, and the time before that as well!”

Mrs. Kempner hissed her indignation at this memory, and, having divested herself of all handy crockery, reached for—Sara’s nerve failed her—a rolling pin as thick and long as a man’s arm.

“Your boy shouldn’t always be standing around where he can be so easily kidnapped!” she decided, and the rolling pin went spinning through the air on such an improbable axis, it actually did clip Emma in the shoulder.

Emma reeled back at the blow, and Sara, perceiving that she might actually be needed to help bring an end to this, fit her hand into her purse and edged out around the far side of the lamp.

“Please, Mrs. Kempner,” Emma got out between clenched teeth, “I need you to listen to reason. Your son has stolen something particularly valuable—“

“Lies!”

“—and you are not helping anybody by persisting in this—oh my _God_.”

Mrs. Kempner had opened a drawer and taken out a knife to rival the rolling pin in size. Emma’s eyes started out of her head as Mrs. Kempner advanced, raising it . . . and Sara brought a steel baton down sharply across the woman’s wrist.

The knife clattered to the ground and Emma seized her opening, darting forward and using her good arm to catch Mrs. Kempner by the wrist. With support from Sara she managed to subdue the older woman and get her settled on the couch. Then, while Mrs. Kempner hissed sulky invective, the two settled down across from her, winded, to exchange critically appraising looks.

“You’re pretty handy with that thing,” Emma acknowledged, nodding at the baton Sara had telescoped neatly down to palm size before returning it to her bag.

“Thank you,” Sara murmured, and flushed with quiet pride. She indicated Emma’s arm with some concern.

“Speaking of handy . . .”

“Oh,” Emma looked down at it in mild surprise, as if she had just remembered the blow. “Yeah, I’ll have to get it looked at. Not just now, though. For now,” she turned her full attention on their scowling prisoner, “we need to chat.”

“If you think,” Mrs. Kempner swelled up with indignation, “that I am going to sell my only son up the river—”

“I think,” said Emma, “you’re going to want me to find him before somebody with fewer scruples goes looking for what he’s got.”

That seemed to capture the older woman’s attention, though she was not in a hurry to admit it.

“You can’t bluff me, Emma Swan,” she said, but even Sara thought her tone was unconvincing. Certainly Emma must have, because suddenly she smiled.

“All right, call it a bluff or not. Either way, I do want you to tell me this: were you actually planning to attack an officer of the law with a kitchen knife?”

“Certainly not,” Mrs. Kempner said primly. “I only meant to assert my rights as a private citizen against the tyranny of the state.”

Emma sighed.

“Well that one was a lie,” she said, almost to herself. “All right. Next question. Has your son been here at all this week?”

“No,” said Mrs. Kempner, and Emma’s eyebrows lifted.

“Huh,” she said. “Well, all right then.”

They left their interviewee cleaning up smashed crockery, and returned to the car.

“You believe her?” Sara asked incredulously as she settled back into her seat. Emma shrugged.

“She was telling the truth. He hasn’t been by.”

Sara considered asking how Emma could be so positive, then decided, on the balance of things, this was not the strangest assertion anybody had made to her since she’d arrived in Storybrooke, and let the matter rest.

As they headed back down the street, Emma spared her a crooked, sincere little smile.

“Thanks, by the way. That stunt with the baton? I appreciate it.”

“Oh!” Sara said. “No, that’s fine. I couldn’t let her . . . well.” She shifted in her seat, and smiled. Then her smile slid sideways. “Did Lou really try to cut your throat? Twice?”

“Oh!” Emma waved her good hand awkwardly, batting the question away. “That. It was nothing.”

“But then,” Sara frowned, “he really is dangerous. I never thought of Lou that way before, but if he attacked you . . .”

“I told you,” Emma said lightly, “things are different in Storybrooke. And besides, you seem plenty able to handle yourself. Who taught you how to swing that thing anyway?”

“Not much teaching to it, really,” Sara murmured, backing off from that line of question with great reluctance. “My dad bought me one when I moved out. I’ve replaced it twice, but otherwise never saw the need to upgrade.”

Emma nodded thoughtfully, guiding the car back in the general direction of the main street. “And your dad never saw the need to upgrade it either?”

“No. He . . . well,” Sara shrugged. “It’s just me, now. I’m all the family I have left.”

Emma’s gaze skittered sideways, then back to the road.

“You sure? You don’t sound sure.”

Sara looked down at her lap.

“I’m sure.”

Emma didn’t press the issue.

The next stop was in a back alley that was mired in filth. Sara picked her footing carefully, but Emma nearly went down in a pile of something highly decomposed. She skidded toward a wall on the slick and Sara caught her just before impact, spinning Emma around to face her. They teetered on the pile of muck, chest-to-chest, staring breathlessly at one another, then abruptly broke apart and looked away.

“If I thought there was even a chance jail would hold the little bastard,” Emma muttered, poking gingerly at her bad shoulder, “I’d lock him up and throw away the key.”

“You keep saying that, but you don’t explain. Why can’t the jail hold him?”

Emma looked at her with the closest thing Sara had seen to real, open evaluation since they met. She looked, Sara thought, almost unguarded. Like she was really thinking about giving a straight answer.

Then a door banged ahead of them, and whatever moment had nearly found them was gone. Emma jerked around and Sara followed the gaze to where three men wrestling with a large, bulky object wrapped in dark oilcloth were just stepping out into the alley.

One of the man was of such proportion, Sara had to look twice to make sure he wasn’t two extremely tall men standing unusually close together. His features were blunt and nondescript, except for this way his face seemed to have decided it had no need of a chin, and instead unceremoniously turned at once into a thick trunk of a neck that terminated in shoulders so broad that Mrs. Kempner’s rolling pin would likely have shattered on impact. The other man was of similar shape but rather less monumental size, with his back to them.

The third man was Lou.

“All right,” Emma called, “Lou and . . . you’ve got the Tweedles. Okay, Lou, Dee, Dum, how about your boys set that down and keep your hands where I can see them?”

Lou jerked around and stared. His face contorted into a scowl.

“Just my luck,” he retorted, “the worst part of each of these stinking worlds would find each other.” He faced them squarely, and Sara’s nerves hummed in anxious response. She didn’t like the way he was staring at Emma, and she especially didn’t like the way his left hand was flexing in the direction of his coat.

“Come on, Lou,” Emma said wearily. “Do we have to go through all this again? We both know the drill. You get up to something shady, we find out it’s . . .” she hesitated. “Connected to the other place, and we shut you down.”

“You make it sound easy,” Lou retorted. His larger acquaintances, the Tweedles, still held the dark package between them and he was moving to stand in front of it. “Like you never had to sweat for it.”

The largest Tweedle was fumbling with the oil cloth.

“As if the last time I didn’t get to your boy, and you weren’t ready to give me everything I asked for until that bitch of a mother of yours,” he ripped up his left sleeve, revealing a knot of puckered red flesh that was still in the middle of the healing process, “SHOT ME IN THE ARM.”

Emma’s face was set and dark. She lifted her palms in an easy little “what are you gonna do?” gesture.

“My mother,” she said, “is of a different time.” She paused. “And place. And . . . skill set. And you got in the way of her arrow. And . . . look, my mom’s a badass, all right? You _know_ that. You think she was going to stand for you hurting Henry any more than I was? Not damn likely.”

She settled her feet a shoulder width apart, and Sara marvelled that anybody who, as far as she could tell, did not carry a weapon could still hold herself as if she did.

“Anyway. Henry’s not here, and neither is my mom. You’re going to want to take that . . . whatever it is out of its wrapping, then let us see it. Tell us where you put the Atlantean Scroll, let us take it back, and this doesn’t have to end with you sitting on your ass in a pile of seaweed, hauling an arrow out of your arm.” A beat. “Again.”

Sara felt, for not the first time since arriving in Storybrooke, that bits and pieces of the narrative were flying past her head like so many torn pages. It seemed she could almost put out her hand to catch one, to divine what she had missed . . . but before she could prompt Emma to elaborate, the large Tweedle had the oilcloth up, and every piece of the narrative to date spun into a dizzying cyclone of impossible fact.

The thing they were carrying was a frame, just barely too long to fairly be called square, and appeared to be cut entirely from stone. As Sara watched, the centre resolved from a clear view of the alley on the other side to something else. The picture of the alley muddied, darkened, and swirled. Shot through with blue and green, it began to bubble.

“What the hell?” Sara whispered. Emma, beside her, seemed apprehensive but not surprised.

“Lou,” she said sharply, “damn it, Lou, what’s the range on that thing? Don’t DO this. I am already pissed off from dealing with your mother; don’t make me jump through a stupid portal today too.”

Lou did not appear to heed her warning. He was grinning, backing toward the portal as he flipped his jacket open to reveal a grey cylinder tucked in his top pocket.

The scroll.

“Range is local for now,” he said, in answer to Emma’s question. “But when you know the password you can jump whole worlds. And this,” he tapped the scroll, “has the password for all of ‘em.”

Then he jumped. Tucked his legs up to his chin like a circus acrobat and cannonballed into the opening, and he was gone.

“What,” said Sara, “the actual _Hell_?”

Emma ignored her, running over to the portal and looking down into the swirling void.

“You two Tweedlelumps,” she stabbed a finger in the direction of each of the men holding it, “are going to save yourselves the distinct privilege of facing both my parents, together, if and _only_ if you tell me where he went.”

The Tweedle on the left picked his footing uneasily and glanced at the one on the right. The right-hand one nodded. So the left-hand one sighed, and told her.

“The school. He had it set for the school. Just in case . . . well. You showed up.”

Emma hissed and swing her foot at the frame, then grimaced when she made contact. It really was solid rock.

“Will it take anyone?” she demanded. The one on the left shook his head.

“Not farther than a few dozen yards. Any farther than that, it has to be set to you. Takes candle magic and a day or more. Even then it only has a range of about five miles, and the farther out you go the dodgier it gets, but . . . well, school’s not more than two, is it?”

Emma frowned at the window, thinking. Then she nodded.

“All right. Put it in the car. You’re going to tell me ALL about it on the way.”

“Oh no,” said the one on the left, alarmed, “I ain’t gettin’ within spitting distance of that place. Your mom works there, doesn’t she?”

Emma rounded on him.

“Yes, she does. And unless you’d like to explain to my father why you ran away when you knew your boss was heading right for the school where his wife and grandson were, _with_ the Atlantean Scroll in his pocket and a chip on his shoulder, you’re damn right you’re coming to the school.”

Mild as milk, the Tweedles loaded the stone frame into the trunk of the Bug, climbed into the backseat and folded their knees up to their chins like giant, sulking children about to be carted off to face the penalty of their truancy.

Emma turned to face Sara, uncertainty and apology softening her face in equal measures.

“Look,” she said. “I don’t have time . . . I mean, I know you must have questions, but—”

Sara, with a supreme effort, shook her head.

“No. Look. This day has not gone even a little bit like I thought it would, but you seem to know what you’re doing. And call me crazy, but I trust you.” She laid her hand on the door handle, and jerked her head to the driver’s seat, giving Emma her cue.

“Let’s go get him.”

A small smile of pleased disbelief turned up the corners of Emma’s mouth. She slid behind the wheel, and as they eased back down the alley, she risked a sideways glance at her passenger.

“Do you really? Trust me, I mean.”

Sara nodded.

“I’ve met some crooked people, don’t get me wrong. People who hide things and call you crazy for calling them on it. But whatever you’re hiding . . . I mean, if you’re hiding anything bigger than _that_ ,” she indicated the trunk, “which I’m pretty sure you are . . . I’m also pretty sure you’re not doing it for the worst reasons.”

A delicate flush coloured Emma’s cheekbones as she manoeuvred the car down the main street, picking up speed as they went.

“You never know how it’s going to go,” she explained. “People finding out. You know?”

Sara still wasn’t sure she’d found out much of anything, but she nodded anyway.

“What is this place, though?” she wanted to know. “Is the reason it’s not on the maps, or the GPS, or anything like that to do with this kind of thing?” She indicated the trunk again, then forced herself to say the word. “Magic?”

“Yes.” Emma took a corner so hard that their two passengers groaned. “Regina took care of all that, with Mr. Gold’s help. Speaking of,” she looked into the backseat, “you two. Tweedles. Talk. How many presets on the frame thingy?”

“It’s not like that,” the left-hand Tweedle said irritably. “You don’t set it like a PVR. The whole thing works on willpower. You just picture it and go.”

“And where’s it from, originally?” Emma continued her interrogation mid-transit. “The forest?”

“Naw,” said the one on the right. “It’s from here, right enough. This world. Babylonian artefact.”

Emma’s hands slipped on the wheel.

“Babylon?”

“Called it the doorway, didn’t they?” the left-hand Tweedle, the larger of the two, seemed the most gregarious. “For all it’s more the size of a potty little window. Used it to open their way into other worlds. But they needed the scroll for doing that, and the scroll was lost. Mr. Lou’s been working to get it all back. Wants to open a taxi service, he does. Ever so enterprising, is Mr. Lou.”

“Oh for—” Emma shook her head, disgusted. “You mean he wants to charge travellers for world-jumping?”

“Naw, not worlds,” the left-hand Tweedle seemed to have given up all pretence of professional discretion, and was sharing freely. “Anyone can jump a world if they really want to pay. Mr. Lou doesn’t fancy competing with the market, he says.”

“Well then what—“

“Time!” The right hand Tweedle blurted out, with the appearance of one too long ignored. “Wants people to pay to go back and forth in time. They’d just got that sorted, the Atlanteans, and the Babylonians were trying to adapt it to their purposes. That’s what the window is for. They used it as a kind of test object, though there were other things they tested too. More portable-like.” He rubbed the back of his neck in self pity. “Do wish Mr. Lou had managed to find a smaller one.”

Sara looked back in open shock, then over to Emma.

“That—it’s possible? Time travel?”

Emma frowned.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I know somebody who would know, but we don’t have time to stop and ask him now. Not if Lou’s gone to the school.”

“Oh he’s gone to the school, right enough,” Left-hand Tweedle said complacently. “He’ll need your boy to get the window back, won’t he? You’d not have let him walk out of here with it, so he’ll need to make you want to.”

Emma ground her teeth and put her foot down. The car leaped ahead with a bone-shaking clatter, and Sara’s hand clutched reflexively at the armrest.

“You okay?” she asked cautiously, as they drove. Emma hesitated, then nodded.

“I will be. Just have to finish this.” She paused. Then, “You?”

Sara considered.

“Well . . . _magic_ , huh?”

Emma’s answering smile was vibrant. Sara’s stomach fluttered pleasantly at the sight.

“Magic,” she said, as though it were her personal confession. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. We can’t be too careful out here, not with people all of a sudden knowing who . . . I mean, most people here are fine. The usual types of issues, grumpy and grudgy and argumentative, like regular people, but not evil. Even these guys,” she jerked her thumb at the Tweedles, “are just a kind of . . . golem henchmen, you know? They’re purpose built for it where they come from. They’re just alive enough to come here but there’s no real malice in them. They need their boss to give them intention.

“Only, we have some of the real bad kind, too. The sneaking lowdown kind who think you can disrupt a kid’s school day just cause his mother’s got a target on their ass. And now that magic’s back, it’s making dealing with them a lot more complicated than just sticking them in jail. I mean,” she warmed to her topic, gesturing furiously with one hand as the car took another corner, and the Tweedles grunted again, “how the hell do you incarcerate a man who can make portals as he pleases? Shitty little low-grade ones sure, but even without his candles and conjuring shit he can get through open bars no problem.

“Gold is working on something that can hold him but it’s still weeks off. Maybe even months. And until then, Lou’s gonna keep stirring shit and we just have to deal.”

She took another corner, and the response Sara had been formulating was never aired, because they’d arrived.

The school showed signs of a recent chaotic disruption. Children of different sizes were huddled in a muster zone, weeping collectively, while adults gathered around and tried to call roll. A fire truck was parked some distance from the front door, and more cars were arriving around them as parents, summoned by text, telepathy and sheer instinct, came to see what was the matter.

“Oh no,” Emma mumbled, and scrubbed at her face with her knuckles. “If I go out there, I’m going to have to talk to everybody first. I can’t do that. Not now. I need to get inside.”

“You have the, um, window,” Sara pointed out. “The doorway, is it? Could _that_ take you in?”

They looked askance at the Tweedles, who looked thoughtful.

“Think it comes out in the basement, or something of the kind,” right-hand Tweedle reflected. “Definitely indoors, though.”

“Good,” Emma nodded, and backed the car up, off the main walkway and into the comparative shelter of a few bushy pines. “That should work fine. Let’s get it set up before anybody sees us.”

It almost worked. Certainly most of the attention was on the school, but a yellow car was also not entirely inconspicuous, and it caught the attention of two people near the front of the crowd. Mayor Mills and a tall, square man with fair hair both shouldered their way over just in time to see Emma directing the Tweedles as they set up the portal. Sara tugged on Emma’s cuff in quiet warning moments before the mayor burst out,

“And where the hell have you been? The man you told me to swear out a warrant on is in there right now, with my _son_!”

“Our son, Regina,” Emma said, with the air of one visiting an argument that was both tiresome and a slightly tender point. “And yes, thank you, I am well aware of where he is and who he’s with.” She turned her attention to the man at the Mayor’s side.

“David. How’s Mary Margaret?”

David shook his head. “Haven’t been able to make contact with her. He’s got something up all around the room. Blue thinks it’s a low-level damper of a sort, in case any of the kids in there could have gotten a message out otherwise.”

“So we don’t even have telepaths. Awesome,” Emma grimaced. “There goes that idea. All right, I need to get in there now.”

“Emma, no,” David reached out to take her elbow in real agitation. “When he already has both—no, please. Let me go in.”

“Yeah,” Emma said, equal parts terse and sympathetic, “because you’d be able to keep such a cool head yourself when he has Mary Margaret and Henry.”

David dropped back with the expressive grimace of a person too fair to pretend he hasn’t been scored on.

“Together, then?” he suggested, but Emma shook her head again.

“You both need to stay out here. You can deal with the crowds together. United front, soothing tones, bullshit political non-answers and all the other stuff you were both brought up to do. Regina’s probably just going to piss them off more when she tries it, but it’s fine, that will be its own distraction.

“I, however,” she jerked her thumb at the muddied, blue-and-green-streaked aperture of the Babylonian doorway, “spent my childhood getting out of tight spots. I think it’s important we all play to our strengths right now.”

Both David and Mayor Mills dropped back. Sara, however, moved closer to Emma’s side and weighed her words with rapid care before she spoke them, softly, directly into Emma’s ear.

“I’m actually pretty good at . . . surprising people.”

Emma hesitated. Sara saw, writ clearly in her face, the desire to protect far too many people in an impossible situation with far too little time. She dropped her chin in a jerky nod.

“I’d say you are.” She hesitated almost imperceptibly, then reached out and caught Sara’s hand; squeezed it. Then she stepped aside and indicated the portal. “So, surprise me.”

Sara shut her eyes, and jumped.

 

* * *

 

They landed on the hard concrete floor of the school basement. Sara lost a shoe. Emma knocked her bad shoulder against the floor on landing, and let out a groan. Supporting each other, they got to their feet, dusted off, and got their bearings.

“All right. Hallway’s this way.” Emma started cautiously toward the door. “All the regular classes are upstairs, and Henry’s homeroom doesn’t take options until next term. It’s after lunch time, right?” Still thinking out loud, if barely louder than under her breath, Emma stepped into the hallways and considered the two staircases, one at either end. “His room’s closer to that one,” she pointed.

“Lou will probably be expecting me to come in anyway, so there’s no point in my sneaking up on him, but _you_ . . .” she considered Sara with an intensity of focus that made Sara’s head swim and her knees wobble. She felt not just observed, but . . . probed. _Seen_. Like somehow Emma had divined her every secret in a heartbeat, and now carried them inside her.

“What the hell was that?” she said breathlessly, and it was Emma’s turn to be shocked.

“What was what?”

“What you did, just then. The—the looking. Was that magic? It felt like magic.”

Emma shook her head, genuinely bewildered. “No. You felt something? Really?”

Sara nodded. She put her hand to her stomach.

“You shouldn’t do magic on people without asking them first,” she mumbled.

“No of course you shouldn’t,” Emma agreed, and steadied her with her good hand. “I honestly had no idea it might be, though. I’ve always been kind of good at reading people, but now that magic’s back, I guess maybe it means I’m doing something more than I used to.

“I am sorry I did magic on you. But I think I know exactly how we’re going to play this.”

 

* * *

 

Mary Margaret sat at one end of her classroom, securely trussed to a desk chair. A multi-grade assortment of students huddled at the other end, among them her grandson. Their captor, nursing a collection of bruises courtesy of hurled missiles and a sluggishly-oozing gash on his forearm from where the teacher had nailed him with a pair of scissors, cursed and watched the door.

“I want to go home,” one of the younger students volunteered. He sounded miserable.

“Yeah,” assented an older one, sounding distinctly menacing. “We want to go home.”

“You,” Lou stabbed his finger in their general direction, “are going exactly nowhere until _his_ ,” he stabbed a more intentional finger in Henry’s direction, “mother gets here.”

“If it’s Emma you’re after,” Mary Margaret spoke with perfected parent-teacher-interview placidity, “why not just keep me? Let Henry and the others go. Please. I’m more than enough, don’t you think?”

“Not when it comes to keeping that lot out there from rushing us,” Lou groused. The window blinds had all been drawn but not before they had seen the townsfolk amassing on the lawn. “You think these kids’ parents won’t storm this place the moment I let them go?”

“You think they won’t storm this place the longer you _hold_ them?” Mary Margaret countered. Lou took three quick, angry steps in her direction, hand upraised. Mary Margaret watched his advance unflinchingly, but Henry was on his feet before Lou could reach her.

“Hey!” he said. Lou stopped, and jerked around.

“You sit down.”

“You stay away from my grandma. Takes a real bully to hit somebody who’s already tied up.”

Murmurs of virtuous assent rose from the other students. Lou scowled, and changed direction.

“You suggesting I hit somebody who’s not?”

Henry swallowed, but did not back down.

“No, I’m suggesting _you_ go to—”

“Henry!” Mary Margaret yelped softly. “Not in school.”

The entire class and their captor swiveled to stare at their teacher. Henry flushed.

“Sorry, Mary Margaret,” he murmured. “But he shouldn’t. Mom’s gonna be here soon, she’s going to kick his ass—”

“Henry!”

“—sorry, and then we’ll go home. That’s what happened the last time on the beach, and the time before that at Granny’s, and the time before that, the _first_ time he tried this, at—at Mom’s house. Regina’s house. It’s how it always ends. It’s always the same. He gets his ass kicked.”

“Henry . . .”

“Aw come on, Mary Margaret, it’s a lockdown! If you can’t even swear during a lockdown—”

“No, Henry,” she said softly. “Not that.”

Henry registered, belatedly, that Lou had returned to the chair where his grandmother was bound and was prodding her cheek almost experimentally with the tip of the same sharp scissors she’d used on him.

“Henry,” Lou said, with exaggerated patience, “unless you’d like Snow White to run a little more to the Rose Red end of things, I’m going to suggest you be a good lad now, keep your mouth shut and just sit tight until your mother gets here.”

Henry sat, his face a study in early teenage fury. The children on either side of him gripped his hands as he returned to their midst, nervous comfort humming through the whole group.

Then the door opened, and Emma walked in.

Lou jerked around, half behind Mary Margaret, half towering over her. Emma looked at the pair of them, her expression one of unutterable fatigue.

“You’re going to end this, Lou,” she said, almost gently. “Come on. Sneak thief and two-bit fence is one thing. But this is the sort of stunt that makes people want to open _real_ portals and send you into them without much caring what’s waiting for you on the other side. And near as I could tell, that’s exactly what Regina is out there working on right now. So how about you do everything you can to make us care just enough not to send you into a dragons’ den, and let everybody go?”

Lou, scissors still resting point-first against Mary Margaret’s neck, considered. Then he shrugged.

“The other students can go. But not Henry.”

Emma didn’t budge.

“Like hell. Henry too.”

“Well let’s see about that. Do you have the doorway?”

“It’s waiting outside. Dum and Dee have it. And my father and Regina have them.”

“Right. So you have what I want and I have what you want, which means that Henry is staying right where he is because I need him to get what you have. And besides that, neither of us would believe it for a moment if Madam Mayor promised my safe passage in exchange for anything less than _his_ safety. Don’t insult me, Miss Swan.”

Emma said nothing, but her expression reflected acknowledgement of what he said. He gestured at the students.

“All of you lot, except him. You can get up and go. Nice and easy.”

He budged Mary Margaret’s chair back and it rolled gently across the floor, keeping it in front of him. Emma watched without comment.

Mary Margaret looked sideways to the students and said, with patient good cheer, “Oh _come_ on everybody, let’s get going. Your parents must be so worried. All together; up and out.”

Slowly, with considerable reluctance but also many years’ practice of doing as Mary Margaret said, the class filed out. The sound of footsteps receded down the hall, followed by the creak of a metal door and then, finally, its terminal BANG, followed by the distant cries of parents stretched to the breaking point.

Then it was just Emma and Henry and Mary Margaret, all alone in the room.

 

* * *

 

Sara stood in the hallway and wondered what exactly she’d let herself in for. At the very least, if he did escape with the scroll, her bosses were going to have to pay out tens of millions of dollars to a private collector. Those, though, were the old stakes. The new ones . . . she could hardly bring herself to explore them properly, but it seemed important to try.

If Lou got away, he was not only taking the scroll, but also the ability to . . . well. Honestly, she grappled with the very possibility.

Could it really be so? Travelling in time? And if so, how far? Could you plan where you’d go? Could you maybe even plan _when_?

Sara crouched in the hallway, shadowed by the open door, and as the students made their escape past her, heedless of her concealment, Sara Ellis made a wish. It was the same wish she had always made, from her early teen years and on, so she probably didn’t even realize she was making it. Much the same way a muscle will act in response to an impulse, Sara, at the possibility of time travel, made her usual wish. Except of course this time she made it in Storybrooke, and that made this wish a little different than all the rest.

Her attention was torn, suddenly, from the idea that Lou Kempner of all people might soon have the ability to travel in time by the raised voices of the people in the room.

“—and you’re damn well going to call them in here!”

“No! I am not going to bring one more innocent person into this room until you let Mary Margaret and Henry go out. I’m enough, Lou. You’ve got to see that. I’m _more_ than enough.”

“Your mother said so too,” Lou recalled. “Reckless self endangerment is something of a family trait, I see. Let’s find out if you come by it from both sides.”

The sound of wheels rolling on the floor, a soft gasp, and then a rustle and squeak of hinges.

“Somebody out there better tell his royal highness that if he doesn’t get _my_ property in here in the next ten minutes, I’m going to start chopping branches off his family tree. Got that?”

Then another squeak, and a brief silence.

“You could have just texted him,” Henry muttered.

“I think he’ll find the message is a little more impactful this way,” Lou retorted.

Still Sara crouched in wait.

She continued to crouch as the front door of the school opened and the window entered, borne ceremoniously along by the Tweedles, who were led by David.

“If you can’t walk any faster than that,” he muttered, and left-hand Tweedle—Sara still had no idea if it was the Dee or the Dum—retorted that if His Highness cared to shoulder the burden for himself, well, that was more than fine by him.

David shook his head in irritation, but stayed quiet after that.

When they reached the door, he gestured for the Tweedles to stand back. Then he stepped inside and said, with measured tones, “It’s here.”

“Anybody else come in with you, boys?” Lou called out, and the Tweedles, all their focus on their burden, and none whatsoever on the quiet shape hidden behind the door, called back their assent.

“Well then,” said Lou, with every sign of genuine pleasure, “I suppose this concludes our acquaintance. Now, your highnesses, if you’d both kindly step well clear of the door, her highness and I will be leaving and I know you will all stay here, behaving yourselves, so that I won’t need to cut anybody’s throat. Am I making myself plain?”

“You’re not taking her anywhere,” Emma said quietly. “Look. Whether you’re driving out of here or walking out or jumping in that window and hoping the Tweedles will come find you again, you can’t take Mary Margaret. Take me, let me drive you to the town limit, and you can go wherever you want in my car from there. If you do that . . . I won’t even try to stop you. I swear.”

“Emma—” Mary Margaret began, protesting, but Lou had apparently heard some merit in what she said.

“Yeah?” he reflected. “All right. You can drive the lot of us, and the doorway, to the edge of town—”

Sara perceived some irritation on the part of the two who would be carrying the doorway back out again—

“—and your parents are going to keep everybody back. Nobody is going to follow me. They will make sure of it. Isn’t that so, your highnesses?”

A new note entered his tone, and Sara felt a fresh wave of tension roll out of the room, borne on a watery little gasp, as if somebody had just had her head pulled back rather abruptly.

“All right,” David said quietly. But it was not a peaceful quiet, and Sara, at hearing it, wondered if Lou could possibly have been so lacking in sense that he failed to feel fear at the sound. “All right, we won’t follow you. Nobody will.”

“Excellent,” Lou said complacently. “A pleasure doing business with your highnesses, really. Here, David,” his tone light and insolent, “catch.”

A sudden rattle of wheels and tiny shriek, followed by a soft thud of impact and then a much louder, more aggressive collection of fabric-on-fabric whispers and soft grunts, suggested some kind of transfer had taken place.

Sara kept one eye on the Tweedles, and palmed her baton.

“Just back against the wall, all three of you, now,” Lou was encouraging. His voice was coming closer. Sara could hear the squeak of his heels on the polished industrial tile and the more muted clump of Emma’s low-heeled boots. She rose behind the door to her full height, gauging their progress.

“And I don’t mean to insult your intelligence, but I do want to stress,” he was abreast of the door now, and Sara glimpsed, through the meagre crack between the jamb and the wall, his arm drawn up against Emma’s throat, “exactly _how_ badly it will go for her—”

—he was in the hallway now, still working his way backward. The Tweedles were looking at him, resenting their burden—

“—if you get any ideas about following us,” he was dragging her past the doorknob now, “or letting anybody else do the same.”

Sara struck.

A single, perfect blow to the nape of his neck, and Lou staggered forward. A second to his elbow, and he slacked his grip. Emma, choking less, drove the elbow of her good arm back into his stomach and wrenched free as he doubled over.

Sara stepped in and swung her baton to deliver a smart tap on the underside of his chin, and Lou’s head snapped back. He staggered backward with every appearance of imbalance. Sara only saw, at the last possible moment, the way the portal was swirling now.

No longer muddy with blue-green, but grey, almost pearlescent, shot with purple and gold. Somehow, in the unspoken depths of her understanding, Sara knew how that had happened. She knew why.

She even knew exactly where it led.

She also knew, somehow, that as soon as anybody went into it, she would forget, and she could not afford to forget what— _when_ —was on the other side of that portal.

“Oh my God,” she breathed, “no. Don’t—”

She clutched for him, her hand closed around his jacket, but he flipped backward into the void and was gone.

Emma stared at the empty hall. Sara crossed her arms against her own shivering, and stared too.

Then she looked at Emma, with the expression of a person newly woken to a good and surprising sight. Emma, roughed over pretty well from her altercation, had somehow not looked better to Sara since the moment she’d met her.

“I’m sorry, I’m _so_ —are you okay?”

“Am I—oh!” Emma touched her neck thoughtfully. “Yeah. I think so.” Her face softened and she moved closer to Sara. Her own expression suggested she was seeing something worth looking at twice.

“But are you? What do you mean anyway, saying sorry? You have nothing,” her hands were moving up Sara’s arms, offering comfort, offering so much more than that, “absolutely nothing,” she drew her closer, “to be sorry for.”

Her breath warmed Sara’s mouth.

Behind Emma, the Tweedles cleared their collective throats.

Emma’s florid instruction for their dismissal got lost somewhere in the kiss, and Sara thought even the curse words somehow tasted sweet.

Then the door bumped all the way open and she found herself facing David, a wide-eyed, dark-haired teenage boy and an equally wide-eyed, dark-haired woman bound to a rolling desk chair.

“Oh,” Sara said quietly, dropping a half-step back. “I . . . Emma, this . . .”

“Right,” Emma turned to nod at their audience. “Sara, these are my parents. And Henry. Guys . . . Sara.”

Sara nodded cordially.

Emma’s parents—who looked _exactly_ as old as she did, so Sara was definitely going to have to ask if that was genetic or what—nodded cordially back.

Henry still stared.

Then, slowly, he shook his head.

“Well,” he said, “I guess they don’t _all_ have to end exactly the same.”

“Shut up, would you, kid?” Emma mumbled, and pulled him into a crushing hug. “Or fourth kidnapping in two months or not, I swear to God, I’m gonna ground you.”

 

* * *

 

One of the monumental perks, Sara decided, about thwarting an evil magic-user in a town full of people accustomed to dealing with all manner of magic-users, with the explicit blessing of the Sheriff herself, was the remarkable reduction in paperwork. Sara signed a single-page statement that asserted she had acted in self defence when she pushed Louis Kempner out a window in the act of retrieving the property he had stolen from her employer’s client, and she could hardly believe that was all there was to it.

“That’s it?” she repeated, looking up at Emma. “I mean, truly, that’s all of it?”

“That’s everything,” Emma promised, sweeping the paper off the desk, into a file and casually perching herself in its place. “You’re done.”

She smiled at Sara’s transparent pleasure, then carefully, casually added,

“And . . . I guess you’ll be going back to town, huh? Now that he’s gone, I mean, and you have the scroll.”

Sara looked at the cylinder on the desk. It was identical in every possible respect to the one pulled from her target’s pocket on his way into the window, except twelve crucial symbols had been altered with the enigmatic and decidedly magical assistance of the pawnbroker Emma had introduced simply as Mr. Gold.

He had been the least comfortable part of the entire resolution. He had stared at Sara with a chilly penetration, and said “Well somebody has been wishing _very_ hard, hasn’t she?”

And he had not stopped looking at her with that strange, inquisitive, birdlike stare until she left the store on Emma’s arm, and headed to the station to give her statement.

“He’s a bit of a dark horse, but he’s solid on some things, and the town’s secrets are one of them. If he says this will pass any test your authenticator runs it through, you can believe it,” Emma promised as they’d headed to the station, “but it also won’t allow the secrets to get out. It’s better this way, you understand? It has to be.”

And Sara, as much to her own surprise as anyone’s, had agreed that she did.

She knew that the world was definitely not ready for time-travelling Atlanteans, or even Emma Swan.

But Sara Ellis was not the world, and now, sitting at the sheriff’s desk with the sheriff’s glorious backside parked directly in front of her, with the sheriff wondering ever-so-casually if she really had to leave right away, Sara smiled.

“Well,” she said, tucking the scroll back into her purse, “I mean, they don’t expect me back in the city until Monday morning. So . . .”

Emma’s face lit up.

“Stay a while?” she suggested, and leaned in.

Sara tilted her chin.

“Don’t mind if I do,” she said, and lifted her face to receive the kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Your ideas for these two were so intriguing that I had a hard time choosing between them. Thank you for your prompts, and I hope you enjoyed the result.


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